Wahab laments city mayor demolishing houses in Karachi

KARACHI: Mayor Wasim Akhtar of the Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan is busy demolishing the houses of Karachiites in the ongoing anti-encroachment drive and the Pakistan Peoples Party will move court to get it to stop, claimed Information and Law Adviser Murtaza Wahab.

In a press statement issued on Sunday in response to a protest organised earlier in the day by the MQM-P against water shortage in the city, Wahab said, “We will plead the case of Karachi Wallas.”

Earlier on Saturday, the information had told reporters at a press briefing after a provincial cabinet meeting that the Sindh government would file a review petition in the Supreme Court to save residential settlements in the city from getting demolished as part of the ongoing anti-encroachment drive. He said the petition would be filed on the instructions of the chief minister as the provincial government didn’t want to make people homeless.

In Sunday’s press statement, Wahab said the MQM-P was under obligation to inform people about the fate of the Karachi Development Package – the uplift package the new federal government was supposed to announce once MQM-P joined Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf as a coalition partner. “The MQM-P did a compromise with PTI on the rights of the people of Karachi in the name of the Karachi package,” he said.

The adviser also alleged that the MQM-P had also compromised with the federal government on the issue of Karachi’s population being counted as less than it actually was during last year’s census for the sake of once again joining a coalition government.

The people of Karachi would not be fooled anymore through such political tactics as they now know the reality of MQM-P very well, Wahab said.

The adviser claimed that the PPP was the only political force in the province that had challenged the results of the census drive conducted in Sindh in real terms. “The way the MQM-P struck a compromise on the issue of census results, it is no more in a position to face the people of Karachi.”

Wahab further said that the MQM-P had no valid basis to do agitation on water scarcity in the city as it was in fact the political party which should be blamed for the current situation of water shortage.

He said the MQM-P had virtually ruled the urban parts of the province for the past several years during the regime of the former military ruler Pervez Musharraf but it did nothing to resolve Karachi’s water problem.